Musescore doesn't honor the time signature

• Sep 2, 2016 - 01:11

Second measure is 4/8, but Musescore enters rests for 4/4. Impossible for me to recreate this score in Musescore.

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Stanchinsky Nocturne.mscz 19.03 KB

Comments

Musescore just puts in the whole note rest for any full measure of rest - which is standard notation. To change it, select the rest and type 5. Isn't the full measure rest in 4/16, anyway?

Even though you have edited the time signature to *appear* as 4/8, you never actually changed the time signature to 4/8 - it's still 4/4, as one can see by right clicking the 4/8 and choosing Time Signature Properties. You need to actually change the time signature to 4/8 (see the Handbook for how to create time signatures not already present on the palette); simply altering the text won't change how many beats the measure contains.

In reply to by Marc Sabatella

I do own your book, but I'm at the library and the book is at home. I have no idea how to actually "change" the time signature. This is just one more of many areas where Musescore is totally unintuitive. I have clicked on the time signature and looked at the properties, but there is nothing to change other than the Text. The other fields won't move.

My understanding of music notation would be that if you have a measure of 4/8, you would have a measure filled with four 1/8 note rests and proceed from there. Seriously how is one supposed to figure these issues out? When I get home, I'll look at your book and see if it can help me. I have to look at the original score, perhaps the first measure is actually all screwed up too.

By the way this is not the first measure of the actual piece, rather where I chose to start working. Another issue is I don't need three staves all the time, just for a few measures where the composer added extra notes in the bass.

An observation that I should probably be smarter to leave out: A person can waste hours of time trying to figure out how to accomplish in Musescore what should be very obvious and simple in a well crafted music notation program.

In reply to by gBouchard

You don't need my book. As I said, simply check out the Handbook - the online manual that everyone can access for free directly from within MuseScore via the Help menu or from this very web site via the link in the menu at right of this page. In particular, see https://musescore.org/en/handbook/time-signature. Summary: time signature properties is for altering things about the *current* time signature; it is not for adding new time signatures to your score. For that you need to use the Time Signatures palette. Or, if the time signature you want is uncommon enough to not be on that palette by default, use the Master Palette, or access the time signature creation tool within that palette directly via the shortcut Shift+T.

As for not needing three staves the whole piece, see Style / General / Hide empty staves.

BTW, most smart people know that occasionally they might need to consult the manual for a program with as many features as MuseScore.

Note as well, here, that the first measure of the 4/8 needs two Voices in the top stave - the minim is held for the whole measure and the triplets come in after a half-beat rest.

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Stanchinsky.mscx 53.76 KB

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